§1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns accessing information. In particular, the present invention concerns accessing information in an environment including referenced documents, such as the World Wide Web (referred to as “the Web”) for example.
§1.2 Background Information
Hyperlinks have made finding documents on a network easier. Indeed, hyperlinks are part of the foundation of the Web. A “hyperlink” (or simply a “link”) is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. Thus, it is similar to a citation in literature. However, combined with a data network and suitable access protocol, it can be used to fetch the referenced document or resource. The fetched document or resource can then be saved, viewed, or displayed as part of the referencing document.
For example, HTML documents use hyperlinks to link units of information to other units of information over the Internet. Links are specified in HTML using the <a> (anchor) elements. In the context of HTML, a link has two ends (called “anchors”) and a direction. The link starts at the source anchor and points to the destination anchor. However, the term “link” is often used for the source anchor, while the destination anchor is called the “link target.” A common link target is a URL used in the Web. This can refer to a document, e.g. a Web page, or other resource, or to a position in a Web page. The latter is achieved by means of a HTML element with a “name” or “id” attribute at that position of the HTML document. The URL of the position is the URL of the Web page with “#attribute name” appended.
Users can explore related documents by selecting (e.g., with a left mouse click) links, which take them from a document to a target document identified by the destination anchor of a link. Web browsers, such as Navigator from AOL-Time Warner, Explorer from Microsoft, Firefox from Mozilla, Opera from Opera Software, etc., provide “forward” and “back” buttons to help users navigate among documents.
Although navigating among documents using links and “forward” and “back” buttons help people find information of interest on the Web, additional tools have made finding desired information even easier. For example, search engines, such as the Google search engine from Google of Mountain View, Calif. provide links to documents relevant to a user search query. Further, since people often use the Internet for shopping, advertisements with links to advertiser Websites or Web pages may be useful, particularly if such ads are targeted to a present user interest (e.g., AdWords from Google provides ads targeted to keywords from search queries, and AdSense from Google provides ad targeted to content of a document).
Unfortunately, browsing search results or ads using a browser like Explorer from Microsoft is not as convenient as it could be, particularly if the user is interested in more than one item. For example, in the context of search result pages, typically, the user navigates from the search results page to a particular result of interest. Using a browser like Explorer from Microsoft, if the user wants to go to another result of interest, they must (1) navigate back to the search results page and (2) follow a link to the other result. A similar problem arises in the context of ads. For example, suppose a user is interested in buying an MP3 player. Upon conducting a search, the person would be presented with a search results Web page that includes a set of ads for Websites that sell MP3 players. It is cumbersome to require the user to navigate to each advertiser Website separately, then back to the search results Web page, then back to another advertiser Website, etc.
There exist some mechanisms for browsing search results serially. For example, the Google toolbar from Google of Mountain View, Calif. has “previous” and “next” buttons that can be used to navigate from one search result to the next. One limitation with this approach is that it forces the user to browse through search results serially, in the order presented. Such indiscriminant browsing may force the user to navigate to Web pages that they have no interest in. This would be a detriment to advertisers who were paying for each rendering of one of their pages to a user since the user might load (navigate through) pages of no interest to them to get a later page of interest. Another limitation with this approach is that because only one result is presented to the user (i.e., “rendered”) at a time, each Web page needs to be loaded when the user wants to view it, which can slow the user's browsing experience.
Another mechanism to improve Web browsing is the ability to open a link in a new window. For example, the Firefox browser from Mozilla supports so-called “tabbed browsing.” Using such a tabbed-browsing enabled browser, a user can control-click links to have these links opened into new tabs. The Webpage referenced in the link is fetched, even if the user does not immediately select the link or tab. Unfortunately, however, mouse-over, control-click operations may be cumbersome, and may become annoying to some users, particularly if such operations are repeated over multiple links.
The opera browser allows users to define a list of URLs corresponding to Webpages that will automatically be loaded into tabs whenever the browser is launched. However, this requires the user to know, in advance, what Webpages they will want tabbed. Therefore, such automatic loading and tabbing of Webpages using a predefined list not useful for Webpages with links to Webpages that the user is not familiar with.
In view of the foregoing, it would be useful to improve browsing items, such as search results or ads for example, particularly in instances in which a user will likely be interested in more than one item.